INFORMACIÓN LEGAL

Moleskine Celebrates the Audio Cassette 50th Anniversary With a Special Edition Notebook

10 octubre 2012

Born in the early ‘60s and coming of age in the 80's, audio cassette tapes are turning 50 this year, transformed from a mass-market consumer good into an object of adoration from the analog era.

Moleskine pays tribute to them with a special edition that follows in a series of limited editions that engage pop icons of our time: Woodstock, Pac-Man, Peanuts, Petit Prince, Star Wars, LEGO.

Moleskine and the cassette tape are both simple rectangular shapes and open platforms where the content is created by the user. Moleskine played with this design similarity and made a special edition notebook with a debossed cover that imagines the Large notebook as a desktop tape recorder, and the Pocket notebook as a portable cassette player. The notebooks feature debossed backs. The inner pocket holds specially designed mini stickers.

Audio cassettes were first introduced to consumers in 1962, a breakthrough that changed the way we listened to music. Cassettes were recordable, turning everyone in a potential deejay that could make her/his own compilations and mixes. Cassettes were also portable and introduced the idea that music could travel with you. Much feared by the music industry as a potential threat to intellectual property, the audio cassette fuelled a boom in the home music industry and became a pop-culture symbol of the 70's 80's and early 90's, feeding the cultural imagery of those decades: portable cassette players, ghetto blasters, car tape players, and the ever present mix-tapes.

The cassette tape almost disappeared from the market as a mass-produced good with the introduction of CD's in the mid 80's, followed by MP3's in the 90's - only to reemerge as a cult object for many music and pop culture enthusiasts.

Cassette tapes are now the object of a vast cult and online activity. Even today bands like Sonic Youth release their work on cassette tapes, as collectible objects, while online image searches for "cassette tape" returns 20 million results.

NEWS EMBARGO until October 1st, 2012.

Available on the Moleskine Store and on shelves worldwide starting from October 11st, 2012.

PLEASE DO NOT PUBLISH ANY PHOTOS OR NEWS BEFORE THE LIMITED EDITION IS ACTUALLY AVAILABLE FOR PURCHASE. IT IS POINTLESS AND FRUSTRATING FOR MOLESKINE FANS TO RECEIVE INFORMATION ABOUT A NEW LIMITED EDITION WITHOUT BEING ABLE TO PURCHASE.